And don't forget the missing generations that got mysteriously deleted.
Reputedly, scribes took great care in transcribing what they felt were
the words of their venerated prophets. Deliberate manipulating seems
out of character. Plus, it would have to have been done early not by
"later scribes" to be found in all surviving manuscripts.

Looking at archaeological data there is a correlation there also with
the long-lived patriarchs. There is no trace of civilization in the
Tigris-Euphrates basin prior to 4800 BC. That's the date archaeologists
tacked on to the bottom layer at Eridu, the first city. The flood
layers in the central cities were dated to 2900 BC. That's 1900 years
covered by ten named generations in Genesis. Do the math.

12:4-assumes that Terah died in Haran before Abram left Haran; assumes

that 11:26 gives Terah's age at birth of first son-not Abe), yet

Abraham claims to be too old at 100 (but not at 86).

Not remembering the statistical details of Hill's calculations, I

would note a caveat that a strictly uniform distribution of final

digits in ages is only expected for a very large sample; however, the

deviation in the genealogies from a strictly uniform distribution is

so large as to also be rather unlikely. In other words, the null

model should be checked.

The three copies of the tallies of those returning to Jerusalem in

Ezra, Nehemiah, and I Ezdras suggest that scribes were pretty good at

copying lists of names but had real trouble with numbers.

--
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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